Stan Greenberg This is Grim
Opinion.
Guest essay.
'This Is Grim,' One Democratic Pollster Says.
Dec. 6, 2023.
A man wearing a suit (President Biden), seen from behind, speaks at an event.
Credit. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.
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Thomas be. Edsall.
By Thomas be. Edsall.
Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, the. See. , on politics, demographics and inequality.
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The predictive power of horse-race polling a year from the presidential election is weak at best. The Biden campaign can take some comfort in that. But what recent surveys do reveal is that the coalition that put Joe Biden in the White House in the first place is nowhere near as strong as it was four years ago.
These danger signs include fraying support among core constituencies, including young voters, Black voters and Hispanic voters, and the decline, if not the erasure, of traditional Democratic advantages in representing the interests of the middle class and speaking for the average voter.
Any of these on their own might not be cause for alarm, but taken together they present a dangerous situation for Biden.
From Nov. 5 through Nov. 11, Democracy Corps, a Democratic advisory group founded by Stan Greenberg and James Carville, surveyed 2,500 voters in presidential and Senate battleground states as well as competitive House districts.
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In an email, Greenberg summarized the results: "This is grim. " The study, he said, found that collectively, voters in the Democratic base of "Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, LGBTQ+ community, Gen Z, millennials, unmarried and college women give Trump higher approval ratings than Biden. ".
On 32 subjects ranging from abortion to China, the Democracy Corps survey asked voters to choose which would be better, "Biden and the Democrats" or "Trump and the Republicans. ".
Biden and the Democrats led on six: women's rights (ahead by 17 points), climate change (15 points), addressing racial inequality (10 points), health care (3 points), the president will not be an autocrat (plus 2) and protecting Democracy (plus 1). There was a tie on making democracy more secure.
Donald Trump and the Republicans held leads on the remaining subjects, including being for working people (a 7-point advantage), standing up to elites (8 points), being able to get things done for the American people (12 points), feeling safe (12 points) and keeping wages and salaries up with the cost of living (17 points).
In the case of issues that traditionally favor Republicans, Trump and his allies held commanding leads: patriotism (11 points), crime (17 points), immigration (20 points) and border security (22 points).
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Particularly worrisome for Democrats, who plan to demonize Trump as a threat to democracy, are the advantages Trump and Republicans have on opposing extremism (3 points), getting beyond the chaos (6 points) and protecting the Constitution (8 points).
There is some evidence in both the Democracy Corp survey and in other polls that concerns specific to Biden — including his age and the surge in prices during his presidency — are driving the perception of Democratic weakness rather than discontent with the party itself.
The survey found, for example, that Democratic candidates in House battleground districts are running even with their Republican opponents among all voters, and two points ahead among voters who say they are likely to cast ballots on Election Day.
Along similar lines, a November 2023 NBC News poll found Trump leading Biden by two points, 46-44, but when voters were asked to choose between Trump and an unnamed Democratic candidate, the generic Democrat won 46-40.
In a reflection of both Biden's and Trump's high unfavorability ratings, NBC reported that when voters were asked to choose between Biden and an unnamed generic Republican, the "Republican candidate" led Biden 48-37.
Other nonpartisan polls describe similar Democratic weaknesses. A September Morning Consult survey found, for example, that "voters are now more likely to see the Republican Party as capable of governing, tackling big issues and keeping the country safe compared with the Democratic Party" and that "by a 9-point margin, voters also see the Democratic Party as more ideologically extreme than the G. O. P. ".
In the main, according to Morning Consult, these weaknesses result from declining confidence within Democratic ranks in their own party, rather than strong support for Trump and the Republican Party: "The trends against the Democratic Party are largely driven by worsening perceptions among its own voter base, which suggests that the party will have to rely more than ever on negative partisanship to keep control of the White House. "
Morning Consult posed the same set of questions to voters about the political parties in 2020 and again this year in order to track shifting voter attitudes.
Asked, for example which party is more "capable of governing," 48 percent of voters in 2020 said the Democrats and 42 percent said the Republicans. This year, 47 percent said the Republicans and 44 percent said the Democrats.
Similar shifts occurred on the question of which party will "keep the nation safe" and which party can "tackle the big issues. "
In what amounts to a body blow to Biden and his Democratic allies, Republicans are now virtually tied with Democrats on a matter that has been a mainstay of Democratic support since the formation of the New Deal coalition during the Great Depression. A September 2023 NBC News survey "found that 34 percent of voters believe Republicans are better at looking out for the middle class, while 36 percent say the same of Democrats. The 2-point margin in favor of Democrats is the lowest it has been in the history of the poll. ".
"Democrats have held over 30 years as high as a 29-point advantage as being the party better able to deal with and handle issues of concern to the middle class, " Bill McInturff, a partner in the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies, which joined with the Democratic firm Hart Research to conduct the NBC poll, told me.
Neil Newhouse, who is also a partner at Public Opinion Strategies, emailed me to say that the opinion trends among Black and Hispanic voters "are figures G. O. P. 'ers could only dream about a few years ago. ".
Although many of those with whom I discussed the data voiced deep concern over Biden's prospects, let me cite a couple of experts who are more optimistic.
Simon Rosenberg, a veteran Democratic operative and former president of the New Democratic Network, emailed me a series of bullet points:
The last four presidential elections have gone 51 percent-46 percent Democratic, best run for Dems since F. The. Are. 's elections. Only 1 are — George W. Bush 2004 — has broken 48 percent since the 1992 election, and Dems have won more votes in seven of last eight presidential elections. If there is a party with a coalition problem, it is them, not us.
Our performance since Dobbs remains remarkable, and important. In 2022 we gained in AZ, CO, GA, MI, MN, NH, PA over 2020, getting to 59 percent in CO, 57 percent in PA, 55 percent in MI, 54 percent in NH in that "red wave" year. This year we've won and outperformed across the country in every kind of election, essentially leaving this a blue wave year.
We got to 56 percent in the WI SCOTUS race, 57 percent in Ohio, flipped Colorado Springs and Jacksonville, flipped the VA House, Kentucky Governor Andrew Beshear grew his margin, we won mayoralties and school board races across the United States. Elections are about winning and losing, and we keep winning and they keep losing.
In a recent post on his Substack, "Why I Am Optimistic About 2024," Rosenberg elaborated:
Opposition and fear of MAGA is the dominant force in USA Politics today, and that is a big problem for super-MAGA Trump in 2024. Fear and opposition to MAGA has been propelling our electoral wins since 2018, and will almost certainly do so again next year.
Alex Theodoridis, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, expressed similar optimism concerning Biden's chances: "Once Democrats come to terms with the fact that Biden will be the nominee (and, more importantly, that Trump will in all likelihood be the G. O. P. Nominee), a lot of the internal malaise expressed in current polls should dissipate. "
When Biden begins campaigning in earnest, Theodoridis wrote.
He will likely still come across as relatively competent and steady. And, while Trump always looms over G. O. P. Politics, we will certainly see more coverage of him as G. O. P. Nominee to remind less engaged Democrats and the few true independents that he is a deeply flawed figure who has and would again pose a real threat to our Republic.
When voters finally make up their minds, Theodoridis predicted, "The anti-MAGA, pro-democracy, pro-reproductive-rights message that has boosted turnout and served Democratic candidates well the last two Novembers will likely do so again. ".
Jim Kessler, a senior vice president of Third Way, a Democratic think tank, is nowhere near as confident in Democratic prospects as Rosenberg and Theodoridis are. In an email, Kessler observed that polls at this time need to be taken with a grain of salt — remarking that in 1991, George H. W. Bush appeared to be the prohibitive favorite to win a second term and that in 2011, Mitt Romney was well ahead of President Barack Obama.
In addition, Kessler wrote, in the past month.
The price of gasoline has fallen 20 cents to a national average of $3. 24 a gallon. Headline and core inflation have begun their final descent toward benign, historic levels. Interest rates have fallen about 40 basis points in the past several months. The so-called "misery index" (inflation + unemployment rate) could very well be at a level that is incumbent friendly.
That said, Kessler continued, there are clear danger signs:
Biden won in 2020 because he was perceived as having a more positive brand than the Democratic Party. That brand advantage over the Democratic Party is now gone. Exhibits A and be are crime and immigration. In 2020, Biden was perceived as tougher on crime and the border than the typical Democrat.
In one primary debate, Kessler pointed out.
Biden was the only candidate onstage not to raise his hand on a question that essentially could be interpreted as wanting open borders. He also loudly and repeatedly voiced his opposition to "defund the police" and never ran away from the 1994 crime bill that he authored in the Senate.
That, in Kessler's view, "is not the Joe Biden voters are hearing today. Voters actually hear almost nothing from the administration on crime or the border, and this allows the opposition to define them on an issue of great salience. ".
Biden, Kessler argued, has a credible record on tougher border enforcement and cracking down on crime, but he and other members of the administration don't promote it.
Because these are issues on which our active, progressive base is split. But if you are silent on these issues, it is like an admission of guilt to voters. They believe you do not care or are dismissive of their very real concerns. That means Biden must accept some griping from the left to get this story out to the vast middle.
Will Marshall, president and founder of the center-left Public Policy Institute think tank, responded to my query with an emailed question: "Trump is Kryptonite for American democracy, so why isn't President Biden leading him by 15 points?
Marshall's answer:
Biden's basic problem is that the Democratic Party keeps shrinking, leaving it with a drastically slender margin of error. It's losing working class voters — whites — by enormous, 30-point margins — but nonwhites without college degrees are slipping away too.
The ascendance of largely white, college-educated liberals within party ranks, in Marshall's view, has.
Pushed Democrats far to the dogmatic left, even as their base grows smaller. Young progressives have identified the party with stances on immigration, crime, gender, climate change and Palestinian resistance that are so far from mainstream sentiment that they can even eclipse MAGA extremism.
"Democrats," Marshall wrote, in a line of argument similar to Kessler's.
Have been aiming at the wrong target and have less than a year to adjust their sights. That means putting high prices and living costs front and center, embracing cultural pragmatism, confronting left-wing radicalism on the border, public safety and Israel and embracing a post-populist economics that speaks to working Americans' aspirations for growth and upward mobility rather than their presumed sense of economic victimhood.
Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at Yale, contended that the view of Biden and the Democratic Party as elitist and weak on the very values that were Democratic strengths in the past lacks foundation in practice. Instead, the adverse portrait of the Democrats represents a major success on the part of right-wing media — and a complicit mainstream media — in creating a false picture of the party.
In a forthcoming paper, "Bridging the Blue Divide: The Democrats' New Metro Coalition and the Unexpected Prominence of Redistribution," Hacker said he and three colleagues found that.
Democrats have not changed their orientation nearly as much as critics of the party argue. In particular, the party has not shifted its emphasis from economic to social / identity issues, nor has it moderated its economic positions overall. Instead, it has placed a high priority on an ambitious economic program that involves a wider range of policy aims and instruments than in the past (including industrial policy and pro-labor initiatives as well as social and health policies and public investments) as well as levels of public spending that dwarf those contemplated by party elites in at least a half century.
Why then, Hacker asked, is "the Democratic Party widely perceived to have abandoned pocketbook politics in favor of identity politics?
His answer:
Conservative media have relentlessly focused on this critique and there's strong evidence that media framing shapes how voters view the parties. Indeed, the role of the media in shaping the negative current climate — including more mainstream sources — should not be neglected. The obsessions of right-wing media with the "wokeness" of the Democratic Party seeps into the broader media coverage, and mainstream sources focus on criticisms of the Democrats, in part to uphold their nonpartisan ideal.
Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard, warned that there are major consequences that could result from the weakness of Biden's support. In an email, Enos wrote:
There is no doubt that Democrats and — given that the likely Republican nominee is a would-be authoritarian — Americans more generally should be alarmed by Biden's poll numbers. He is saddled with the need to dig economic perceptions out of a deep inflationary hole, an unsteady international world and the view that his party went too far to the left on social issues.
If the election were held today, Enos argued, "Biden would likely lose. ".
During the campaign, "Biden's numbers will improve," Enos wrote, but Biden faces a large number of idealistic young voters who may.
Never come back to him because they believe that he has abandoned the core values that animated their support in the first place. Faced with the reality of surging immigration across the southern border, Biden has largely failed to liberalize his administration's approach to immigration — in fact, he has left much of the Trump era policies in place. To many young voters, who were first attracted to Biden's social progressivism, such moves may feel like a betrayal. Additionally, Biden has seemed to greenlight Israel's campaign of violence against civilians in Gaza. Especially for young voters of color, this seems like a betrayal and could cost Biden crucial states such as Michigan.
Jonathan Weiler, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, stands somewhere between Rosenberg and Marshall.
"There's no gainsaying Biden's poor polling numbers at the present," Weiler wrote by email:
However unhinged Trump appears increasingly to be, for now that's an abstraction for many voters. In the meantime, what they see in ways that feel up close and personal are signs of an unsettled and unsettling world impinging on their day to day lives, including inflation, higher crime and a big increase in migrants across our southern border and into cities around the United States.
On the plus side for Biden, Weiler wrote, "the data show clearly that inflation is trending substantially downward. " In addition.
Violent crime has returned to prepandemic levels. Americans always think crime is going up, no matter what the data say. But if the actual drop in crime results in people thinking about it less, that could also lessen people's sense of a chaotic and unsettled reality.
Rogers Smith, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, made the case that Biden's age and his visible infirmities interfere with his ability to reassure the electorate:
The biggest factor that is neglected in many polls is the widespread belief that Biden is simply too old and insufficiently vigorous to remain president for four more years. This belief is reinforced by the reality that Biden does not inspire confidence in his vigor or energy in most of his public presentations. The problem is particularly acute among young voters but goes throughout the electorate, Democrats and Republicans alike. It means that voters don't give much weight to Biden's arguments on the issues.
Democrats are trapped, Smith maintained:
None will challenge Biden; he must choose to step aside. If he did so, he would feel compelled to support Kamala Harris. But most Democrats, and probably Biden himself, rightly believe that she would do even worse than he is doing.
The one ace in the hole for Democrats is Donald Trump himself. As the center of attention in the elections of 2018,2020 and even 2022, Trump was the key to Democratic victory. Trump is doing all he can to become the focus in 2024, but the question remains whether the Democrats, with Biden at the top of the ticket, can successfully demonize him again.
More on Biden's prospects for re-election.
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Thomas be. Edsall has been a contributor to the Times Opinion section since 2011. His column on strategic and demographic trends in American politics appears every Wednesday. He previously covered politics for The Washington Post. At edsall.
PURE FUCKING GOLD.
In an email, Greenberg summarized the results: "This is grim. " The study, he said, found that collectively, voters in the Democratic base of "Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, LGBTQ+ community, Gen Z, millennials, unmarried and college women give Trump higher approval ratings than Biden. ".
Ah, what a luxury it is to be a Repub
[QUOTE=Tiny12;2875336]I'll repost the link to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper here. Thirty-nine Nobel Prize winners in economics, 14 members of the Presidents' Council of Eonomic Advisors, and three of the four authors of the paper in question were members of the nonpartisan NBER.
[URL]https://conference.nber.org/conf_papers/f191672.pdf[/URL]
Actually the link does "support the notion that Trump and his Repubs' TCJA measurably increased hiring or wages." It just doesn't attempt to quantify the increase.
Please see Figure 9 on page 45. The blue line shows the estimated increase in labor taxes as a % of the pre-TCJA corporate tax revenue, which results from implementation of the TCJA. By the third year (2020), labor taxes are up by 10% of corporate revenue, and by year 10, they're 15% of corporate revenue. The increase in labor taxes results from an increase in (a) wages and (b) employment, as a result of the TCJA. Again, I'm not saying the corporate tax changes in the TCJA are / were entirely responsible for lower unemployment and higher real wages, but I believe they were partly responsible.
The effect on tax revenues is interesting. You sum the solid red and blue lines on the graph to come up with the net change in corporate tax revenues. In the initial years, the drop in corporate tax revenues is greater than the increase in labor taxes, so the net effect is lower total tax revenues. After year 4 though, total tax revenues are actually higher than they would have been without the TCJA. Go out to year 20, and the Treasury is collecting 18% more tax revenue, expressed as a % of pre-TCJA corporate tax revenue, than it would have otherwise! That's why I say there were no losers here, only winners. The companies, the workers and the Treasury all benefit.
This is a good example of how a Republican led change in policy resulted in benefits to the economy years after it was first implemented. The measures passed during the Biden administration, in particular the American Rescue Plan, were more like sugar highs. They boost the economy while the money's being spent, but then the longer term repercussions, like the increase in the national debt, don't justify the short term high. Admittedly there are long term gains to be had from, for example, the bipartisan infrastructure bill. But given all the pork and inefficiency associated with the Federal bill, I believe local and state fixes for most infrastructure shortcomings are a better way of dealing with inadequate and outdated infrastructure.
Like I said, intuitively I don't believe this made much of a difference, but I'd like to see more info. Here are a list of recent state and local changes in the minimum wage at mid-year 2023.
[URL]https://ogletree.com/insights-resources/blog-posts/midyear-2023-state-and-major-locality-minimum-wage-increases/[/URL]
Are these increases, since the last increase in the minimum wage, in excess of the high inflation that has occurred, coincidentally or not, during the Biden administration? Certainly some of them are not. Take a look at Illiniois..[/QUOTE]Isn't it wonderful for Repubs that they take over from Dems with the USA economy doing so well, so stable and with trajectories heading upward on virtually all positive metrics that they can just kick back, put big bucks into their donor base pockets and wait ten years or more to see if any of it trickles down to anyone else and possibly produces anything at all noticeable even after the likely addition to the deficit is that lovely $1. 5 Trillion that apparently never bothers economy academics?
I mean, verses the conditions Dems encounter when they take over from those same Repubs where the USA economy is Crashing Down around our ears, jobs are being wiped out by the millions upon millions, brave free-market Capitalists are diving under their beds and wouldn't be coaxed out from under it to tip-toe back into the light if day even in 20 years unless they are assured that somebody else, invariably the Federal Government, will do whatever is necessary and this very minute to reactivate the Sun and make the road ahead smooth as far as the eye can see. Oh, and why didn't those economic slacker Dems accomplish all of that and save the World "yesterday", what is this shit about "wait ten years and we'll see"? Dammit, there are NO JOBS, NO FOOD, NO WATER now! LOL.
And the thing is it doesn't matter if America gives Repub economic policy and stewardship 4 years, 8 years or an uninterrupted 12 years to work its "magic" on the economy. Repubs are apparently contractually obligated to search out and facilitate whatever "Once in a Hundred Years" or "Unprecedented" Disaster is available or handy to exploit and embrace in order to make absolutely certain that no "win-win" ever occurs in the Real World and instead that the Incoming Dem is met with either millions upon millions of jobs being wiped out or, at best, utterly lackluster job numbers were created while the deficit has hit historic highs to buy those lackluster results. Either way, we get the usual Crap Results ftom Repubs, no matter how pie-in-the-sky 10,000 Nobel Prize-Winning economists said it would be if we all just hold tight and wait ten years with none of those wild coincidental-only-to-Repubs Disasters happening between now and then. And when, not if, it does happen, nobody is going to remember what those silly predictions were ten years earlier anyway.
Is Lee Greenwood singing about this?
[B]Retail Group Retracts Startling Claim About Organized Shoplifting.
The National Retail Federation had said that nearly half of the industrys $94.5 billion in missing merchandise in 2021 was the result of organized theft.
It was likely closer to 5 percent, experts say.
Dec. 8, 2023[/B]
[URL]https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shoplifting-retail-crime-theft-retraction.html[/URL]#text=In%20 fact%2 see%20 retail%20 theft%20 has, fallen%207%20 percent%20 since%202019.
[QUOTE]But in most major cities, shoplifting incidents [b]have fallen 7 percent since 2019[/b].[/QUOTE]That's right. Lower than pre Trump's Pandemic. Lower than under Trump.
Oh, if only there was somebody who has someone paying for his subscription to the NYT for those wonderful reports and articles and can post the entire report here.
Shhh. Don't anybody tell Bill Maher about this. He will have to re-write half of his 2024 Repub Election Campaign Biden / Dem-slamming jokes.
And, as usual, utterly lucid, cognitively competent and superior to any Repub's lunacy Joe Biden got it right on the reason Trump's Pandemic Recovery's inevitable transitory Inflation got to where it went and lingered as long as it did:
[B]Biden turns up pressure on corporate price gouging as 2024 nears.
Dec. 1, 2023[/B]
[URL]https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/12/01/biden-price-gouging-inflation/[/URL]
[B]'Excess profits at big energy and consumer companies pushed up inflation, report claims.
Dec. 8, 2023[/B]
[URL]https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/08/excess-profits-of-big-firms-have-driven-up-inflation-report-claims.html?__source=androidappshare[/URL]
Shhh. Don't anybody tell Larry Summers about this. He will have to cancel all of his typically pro Repub Mainstream Media 2024 Repub Election Campaign appearances.
FAKE tits, FAKE party, FAKE Leader...it's all Repub FAKE!
[QUOTE=Tiny 12;2875705]Hell yeah! MILF's for Liberty! I'll take one of those over a hairy Commie any day! Maybe Lauren Boebert's a member? That MILF has some fine tata's![/QUOTE] Why am I not surprised you'd think Lauren Opal Boebert's "tatas" are fine. IMHO, those so called "tatas"/tits of hers, are about as FAKE, as Trump's claims of election fraud, or his state's FAKE electors.
[b]Fake electors in Wisconsin first to admit Biden won election and face and face penalty[/b]
[URL]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/06/wisconsin-fake-electors-admit-biden-won-2020-election[/URL]
But then again, having FAKE tits w/r to MILFs for Liberty, would naturally make sense and align with their FAKE organization, mandate and charter.
Well if Rep.Lauren Opal Boebert (R-CO), is a member of the newly branded [b]MILF's for Liberty[/b], it wouldn't surprise me either, as the hypocrisy for "good family values" and non-groomers would be complete.
Maybe Repub Christian Ziegler, could get that "quality" raping time...I mean groping time, in with Opal Boebert, at the [b]next showing/performance of Beetlejuice.[/b] That is of course, if Ziegler, doesn't go too far and Boebert, shoots his dick off....kkkk!
Well, stay tuned, as things are getting interesting:
[b]"Video may contradict details of rape allegation against Christian Ziegler[/b]
[URL]https://floridapolitics.com/archives/648037-police-video-may-contradict-details-of-rape-allegation-against-christian-ziegler/[/URL]
Just surrender already ET LMAO its over, our Lord and Savior is coming back
[URL]https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2023/12/09/cnns-avlon-dems-need-a-solution-on-out-of-control-crime-border-and-not-say-what-people-see-isnt-real/[/URL]
